The Week That Was: Firefox 3.5, ThePirateBay Sold

Techtree's Weekly News Roundup

Techtree News Staff, Jul 04, 2009 1442 hrs IST

Take a quick look at the tech news that hogged the headlines last week.

Another week has gone past us with a blur. Which means, its time for yet another round-up of the tech news that grabbed headlines last week! Here we Go!

Samsung Announces Four New Music Phones

Samsung has finally announced the launch of four new music centric mobile phones. The new models to see the light of the day are the 6700, C5510, M2510 and M2310. You might want to hit the above link for more dope on each of the models.

Acer Poised to Beat Dell?
Acer, the once small-time laptop and PC manufacturer from the far east is now all poised to become the worlds second largest PC maker if the current trends continue. It has been eating into the market share of the top two manufacturers HP and Dell and might just relegate De;; to the third spot in the near future.

Phone + Game Hybrid Coming Via Sony?
Sony is in news yet again for prepping a PSP-phone like concept. Nikkei, the Japanese business daily, reported that Sony is planning to a cellphone-gaming hybrid gear. Evidently Sony is planning an iPhone killer that will have their PlayStation Portable gaming prowess. For this, Sony plans to set up a project team in early July.

Universal Phone Chargers Coming Soon

Come 2010 and there would be little chance that you'd be scampering around for a "compatible" charger once you realize your phone is about to run out of power. Just plug in any mobile phone charger you have in range and voila! your phone is charged!

This is possible because by 2010 most prominent mobile phone manufacturers will be adopting universal chargers and will use only one type of chargers across a variety of devices. The movement spearheaded by the Group Special Mobile Association (GSMA) has several major manufacturers including Apple, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, LG , NEC, Qualcomm, Research In Motion, Samsung and Texas Instruments signed up for the initiative.

The PirateBay Sold. Might Go Legitimate!

This might just be the end of Pirate Bay as most users know. According to latest reports, a gaming company, Global Gaming Factory X (GGF), is in the process of acquiring TPB for $7.8 million. A blog post on the popular website has confirmed that things are moving in this direction and most users of the site seem to have been disappointed by the decision to "give away" TPB.

Nokia N97 On Sale Now!
The much anticipated Nokia N97 is now on sale across the country. While the phone was available in major cities over the past week or so, its availability has been "extended" to other parts of the country.
The phone will retail at an official price of Rs.36,119/-

Flickr Adds Twitter Support
While a majority of users on Twitter used Twitpic.com for posting photos, most of them cribbed and wondered on why Flickr won't provide them Twitter support. So now Flickr has gone ahead and released a feature to post photos on Twitter for Flickr users.Those with Flickr accounts can upload images to Flickr and Twitter at the same time or tweet about existing Flickr-based photo using exclusive Flic.kr short URL.

Mobile Phone Numbers to Begin with 8!
The number of mobile phone subscribers in India is certainly humongous; one can safely say so as the Department of Telecom , or DoT, has almost run out of numbers that begin with '9'! So, soon enough, you'll have numbers that begin with the digit 8. According to ToI, 10 crore new numbers will be introduced, out of which approximately half will be allotted to companies.

Gmail Gets Drag and Drop Feature
If you were eagerly waiting for drag and drop to come to Gmail, rejoice! It's finally here! Most Gmail users woke up early morning to find out some whacky changes to the popular web mail - the main change being the ability to drag and drop emails to labels. Other changes include the shift of the labels option to a new location on the left side bar. It's now located above the "Chats" section and you can now choose what labels you would like to see there. The other labels will of course be accessible via a drop down menu, another new feature addition.

Facebook's Transition Tools
Facebook seems to be committed to tighten the screws of its privacy and 'tools for tailoring' features for its members, so it says in its latest blog post. The social networking website has incorporated several measures in this respect based on the three principles of Privacy, Control, and Connection.

The website will be offering 'a bunch of people' something called the Transition Tool which will enable them to define the level of information to be shared with other users.

Firefox 3.5 Released
Mozilla officially released Firefox 3.5 on Tuesday. The new version of the popular open source web browser has attracted considerable attention and is already seeing rapid adoption. It was downloaded over 5 million times during the first 24 hours. Read our first impressions of the browser by hitting the above link.